mmmcannibalism wrote:Back on weapon discussion, I think a short spear with reserved sword and a shield would be rather deadly with some fine tuning of the shield size/strength and spear length. Lets you keep opponent at distance and provides a throwing option if the opportunity presents.

As far as I recall, Roman soldiers were equipped javelins, swords and shields. But I think the javelins were mostly used to fuck up shields.

I edit my posts a lot and sometimes the words wrong order words appear in sentences get messed up.

You, sir, name? wrote:As far as I recall, Roman soldiers were equipped javelins, swords and shields. But I think the javelins were mostly used to fuck up shields.

They were. The heads were soft, so after punching through a shield the weight of the shaft would bend it, making it a total pain in the ass to pull out. Their range was pretty short (since the shit was heavy) and it wasn't the kind of thing you could stop a charging horse with, but it wasn't completely useless as a stabbing weapon. Good thing to remember with the Romans is that they were close-order fighters and their weapons reflected this, although they'd probably be better off in a one-on-one fight than a hoplite or phalangite would be (the aspis is really lousy outside of the phalanx, same goes for 18-foot sarissas). In a one-on-one fight I'd actually give the advantage to a Briton, Gaul or German.

SexyTalon wrote:The Crossbow is pretty much the gold standard there - in an afternoon or less, you can learn to kill a armored warrior with 20 years of experience.

Well, if you have a decent group of people with them. One crossbow has a chance, but not a great one, of killing a guy in harness before he kills you. And he can kill/disable crossbowman after crossbowman until he gets tired. Crossbows are useless without support from people with pointy sticks and armour. However, the reverse is not true, the armoured guy is his own fighting system and with sufficient numbers will put a dent in any formation until they run away.

AFAIK IANAHistorian I just read a lot of books

"Until he gets tired" is the operative phrase here. What do you wanna bet the guy with the crossbow can outrun him?

I hadn't even thought of that. Given equal fitness a light/unarmed opponent could run circles around someone in plate.

Which is why warriors that were wearing plate armor were always mounted. On foot they're at a tremendous disadvantage - the helm restricts visibility, fatigue is a major concern (and not just due to the weight of the armor but also due to the fact that it doesn't have squat for ventilation - even in moderate temperatures overheating is a serious problem), and obviously mobility is another major issue. While you can still move around in plate armor, it's not like you're gonna be winning footraces in it. Granted, I've never worn plate armor, but that's what every factual account of it seems to imply.

Hell, even massed cavalry charges weren't the be-all/end-all back in the day. Your archers and artillerymen (using light engines like ballistae before the advent of gunpower and cannons afterwards) did an awful lot of the killing. Archers would be vulnerable to a massed heavy cavalry charge, of course, but that's what you had pikemen for. Pikemen didn't even need a lot of training, and were inexpensive to outfit - stand in a rectangle, stay moving as a group, and plant the base of the pike in the ground and put the pointy end towards the enemy. Charging a company of pikemen would be suicide for cavalry, and that's before tricks like stringing wires in the grass or digging ditches to protect your flanks. Also, cavalry isn't worth diddlysquat on any ground that isn't flat and level - you can't charge up a hill and you're just gonna break bones if you try to charge on rocky or uneven terrain, or even on ground that's too soft to accomodate the passing of several hundred thousand tons of man and horse. Cavalry was almost always used in flanking manuevers and the like - the cavalry finished the job and tried to cause a rout, they weren't the stars of the show (those would probably be the archers and infantry, despite all the accolades we tend to heap on the knights these days.)

As far as equipping your armies, you have to remember that the vast majority of armies were just conscripted serfs. The local lord grabbed a bunch of his dudes, threw some simple weapons and armor at them (if they were lucky!), and then threw them at the other guy's collection of random dudes. Swords, metal armor, high quality weapons... fucking forget about it. At most, if they had the time to train them and the money to equip them, the peasants might be given a form of padded cloth armor, and maybe a spear with an actual metal head - or maybe a nice axe or warhammer, but even that's pushing the cost problem. Spears are pretty much man's most simple weapon (it's a pointy stick, pointy end goes in the enemy) and extremely easy to mass produce. With an iron or steel tip, they were also durable. Even more to the point, the spear was a damned useful tool as well as a weapon, and it was light. Need something to hold up your tent? Your spear can do that. Out of food and there's a stream nearby? Hell, go see if you can do some spearfishing.

Weight is/was a huge concern for armies. In addition to food, clothing, and whatever the hell else each man needs, he also needs to carry his weapons and armor, if he has any. 200 miles might not seem like a long distance to us now, but 200 miles might take ten days or more to travel back in the day - 20 miles a day, ten days in the row. If you really needed to get there in a hurry, you could maybe push 40 miles a day (that's ten hours of walking at four miles per hour every day while carrying your equipment and supplies) and get there with all your dudes too worn out to put up a good fight. And don't forget, once you get there you need to setup a (preferably fortified) camp. And god fucking help you if some dude gets a touch of dysentery or cholera along the way. More people died to sickness and diseases than they did to enemy action. Wounded frequently turned into dead due to a lack of even decent medical care.

If you weren't lucky, you got sent into the field with minimal training, no armor, and only what tools you can take with you to use as weapons - pitchforks, scythes, lumber axes, a simple hammer, maybe a simple flail, things like that. Tools that aren't designed for combat in the first place, let alone defeating the chainmail that the other guy's better-equipped dudes (probably household guards or fighters, or maybe mercenaries) might be wearing. If you were a peasant, the most likely use for you is to make the other guy waste arrows on you and waste the energy of his good fighters on killing you. Small surprise peasants tended to not like their lords very much.

In regards to use of shields: if you were using a small shield (like a buckler or a targe), you weren't going to be deflecting a blow from a two-handed weapon of any kind, and trying to do so would probably result in you breaking your arm (and possibly the weapon busting through the shield, especially if it was an axe or blunt weapon.) A light shield would be used to deflect incoming attacks, not absorb them. Even a heavier shield would be better used to deflect an incoming swordstroke (or whatever) instead of absorbing it - that kinetic energy has to go somewhere, and it's better for it to go to the air than to you. Absorbing a good hit from someone using a heavy mace or axe ("heavy" in this case being like... four or five pounds, not the fifty or sixty games and movies like to make us think) could break your arm - granted, having a broken arm is a lot better than having a broken head, but you're still out of the fight either way. This is also why a blunt weapon like a mace or axe (well, axes were sharpened, but had a similar amount of impact) was effective even against plate armor - even if you don't penetrate the armor (a flanged mace certainly could), you're still transmitting an immense amount of force to that armor, which is then being transmitted to the dude inside the armor. Whacking a dude in head with a good hit from a blunt weapon could bang his forehead or back of his head against the inside of his helmet and knock him out. Getting whopped with a good hit from a decent weapon could easily unhorse a dude riding around on a horse, which then puts him at a significant disadvantage against dudes wearing light armor on foot (let alone the kinda damage falling off your horse while wearing eighty pounds of steel plates can cause.)

Incidentally, this is why getting shot while wearing a bulletproof vest hurts like a motherfucker. The vest stops the bullet, but that force has to go somewhere. It's like being hit with a damn hammer.

Heavier shields were typically used in a shield wall formation (you see it in action in movies like Gladiator, when the Praetorian Guard dudes hustle out to surround Maximus so he can make his badass speech to Comedus), wherein your shield partially overlapped the dude to your left, covering his right side. His shield then covered HIS dude's right side, and so on and so forth. Infantry arranged like this were able to fight effectively while being very safe, and without wearing eighty pounds of plate armor (and instead humping around a giant shield that probably weighed twenty pounds.) The shield itself was realistically too heavy to actually move around much with, but it was terrific for defending yourself - it was basically a portable wall. Attacking a formation of shields like this was a great way to get carved up (this is why a few thousand Roman legionnaires could kick the shit out of a hundred thousand untrained barbarians), but once the shield wall loses cohesion, they're in deep trouble. Taking one man out of the formation, they can probably handle. Losing twenty? You're in deep, deep shit. The entire formation revolves around the concept of the guy to your right protecting your right-hand side (sucks to be a lefty, I guess.) If the guy on your right gets killed and there's no one to replace him, suddenly your entire formation has a glaring opening - they'll kill you by attacking your vulnerable right-hand side and eventually kill enough dudes so that the shield wall loses cohesion, at which point they're at a disadvantage due to the weight of their shields limiting their personal mobility. It's kinda the same concept as heavy cavalry, just without the horses.

pizzazz wrote:I noticed you mostly picked on older matchups--do you think the modern matchups like Green Beret/Spetsnaz or IRA/taliban make more sense? Because I find them more boring, as I explained above.

I've honestly not even watched an entire episode of the show, as I just ended up finding the whole thing too ridiculous to watch the few times I tried. But yeah, those are easier to compare but the main problem is that if you're marketing something as a 1:1 comparison between two different sorts of fighters, there needs to be a greater correlation between them than "Both are human". Similar status in their militaries, similar usage on the battlefield maybe, similarish fighting styles - you don't want to match up someone who works in large groups (Greek Phalanx being a perfect example here) against someone who works in small teams. Unless you're measuring something else. A Viking/Pirate off on How Much Booty Can Be Grabbed In A Year of Raiding would be interesting, as the Pirates should tend to take more prizes in a year, while the Vikings tend to take out entire towns and monasteries.

pizzazz wrote:I noticed you mostly picked on older matchups--do you think the modern matchups like Green Beret/Spetsnaz or IRA/taliban make more sense? Because I find them more boring, as I explained above.

I've honestly not even watched an entire episode of the show, as I just ended up finding the whole thing too ridiculous to watch the few times I tried. But yeah, those are easier to compare but the main problem is that if you're marketing something as a 1:1 comparison between two different sorts of fighters, there needs to be a greater correlation between them than "Both are human". Similar status in their militaries, similar usage on the battlefield maybe, similarish fighting styles - you don't want to match up someone who works in large groups (Greek Phalanx being a perfect example here) against someone who works in small teams. Unless you're measuring something else. A Viking/Pirate off on How Much Booty Can Be Grabbed In A Year of Raiding would be interesting, as the Pirates should tend to take more prizes in a year, while the Vikings tend to take out entire towns and monasteries.

Yeah see, the problem is it's not a serious military or historical show, it's Spike TV brotainment. Making it detailed, accurate and highly-informative would totally defeat the purpose.

pizzazz wrote:I noticed you mostly picked on older matchups--do you think the modern matchups like Green Beret/Spetsnaz or IRA/taliban make more sense? Because I find them more boring, as I explained above.

I've honestly not even watched an entire episode of the show, as I just ended up finding the whole thing too ridiculous to watch the few times I tried. But yeah, those are easier to compare but the main problem is that if you're marketing something as a 1:1 comparison between two different sorts of fighters, there needs to be a greater correlation between them than "Both are human". Similar status in their militaries, similar usage on the battlefield maybe, similarish fighting styles - you don't want to match up someone who works in large groups (Greek Phalanx being a perfect example here) against someone who works in small teams. Unless you're measuring something else. A Viking/Pirate off on How Much Booty Can Be Grabbed In A Year of Raiding would be interesting, as the Pirates should tend to take more prizes in a year, while the Vikings tend to take out entire towns and monasteries.

You're basically talking about a Warrior Culture versus a Soldier Culture. A Warrior culture is a culture which idealizes and heroizes (I don't think that's a word, but fuck it I'm making it up on the spot) the individual fighter. Braveheart, Conan the Barbarian, Batman - all of these would be examples of a Warrior culture thing, because they all tend to fight for personal motivation and glory, and they tend to either fight alone, or in small groups of loosely organized fighters. The fight because it's a source of honor and glory.

A Soldier culture is a culture which idealizes and exemplifies putting the whole over the individual. You aren't a lone glory seeker, you're a cog in an unstoppable war machine. You follow orders and are just one of many in a tightly organized and controlled fighting group. You fight because it's your job.

As a result, Warrior cultures tend to get wiped out by Soldier cultures. A small group of Warriors (ninjas?) will typically defeat a small group of Soldiers (pirates?), while an entire Warrior culture will generally fall to the superior training, logistics, and tactics of a Soldier culture.

pizzazz wrote:I noticed you mostly picked on older matchups--do you think the modern matchups like Green Beret/Spetsnaz or IRA/taliban make more sense? Because I find them more boring, as I explained above.

I've honestly not even watched an entire episode of the show, as I just ended up finding the whole thing too ridiculous to watch the few times I tried. But yeah, those are easier to compare but the main problem is that if you're marketing something as a 1:1 comparison between two different sorts of fighters, there needs to be a greater correlation between them than "Both are human". Similar status in their militaries, similar usage on the battlefield maybe, similarish fighting styles - you don't want to match up someone who works in large groups (Greek Phalanx being a perfect example here) against someone who works in small teams. Unless you're measuring something else. A Viking/Pirate off on How Much Booty Can Be Grabbed In A Year of Raiding would be interesting, as the Pirates should tend to take more prizes in a year, while the Vikings tend to take out entire towns and monasteries.

Yeah see, the problem is it's not a serious military or historical show, it's Spike TV brotainment. Making it detailed, accurate and highly-informative would totally defeat the purpose.

Eh, they definitely try to do Mythbusters-esque things.

I guess I'm saying that for all its faults, they at least test the weapons and, with currently existing organizations, run teams through tests. That's probably the only part of the show where you can consider yourself to have learned something, though.

I guess I'm saying that for all its faults, they at least test the weapons and, with currently existing organizations, run teams through tests. That's probably the only part of the show where you can consider yourself to have learned something, though.

I'm not trying to knock the show, I think it's entertaining, I just don't take it very seriously. The Mythbusters guys take their science very seriously, and on the Deadliest Warrior end it's more so they have numbers to put into the simulator. I have been surprised by how effective a lot of the weapons are though- I used to think of decapitation as being a pretty hard thing to do, but no longer o_o

Beardhammer wrote:You're basically talking about a Warrior Culture versus a Soldier Culture. A Warrior culture is a culture which idealizes and heroizes (I don't think that's a word, but fuck it I'm making it up on the spot) the individual fighter. Braveheart, Conan the Barbarian, Batman - all of these would be examples of a Warrior culture thing, because they all tend to fight for personal motivation and glory, and they tend to either fight alone, or in small groups of loosely organized fighters. The fight because it's a source of honor and glory.

A Soldier culture is a culture which idealizes and exemplifies putting the whole over the individual. You aren't a lone glory seeker, you're a cog in an unstoppable war machine. You follow orders and are just one of many in a tightly organized and controlled fighting group. You fight because it's your job.

As a result, Warrior cultures tend to get wiped out by Soldier cultures. A small group of Warriors (ninjas?) will typically defeat a small group of Soldiers (pirates?), while an entire Warrior culture will generally fall to the superior training, logistics, and tactics of a Soldier culture.

As somebody who's big on both military history and modern-day militaries, this is one of the interpretations that bugs me a little. It's not totally untrue, it just draws a distinction between honor and discipline that I am not a fan of. Soldier cultures don't develop because they drop honor in pursuit of pragmatism, it's because technological advances in warfare made individual honor insignificant so honor was bumped up to larger groups, like the company, the squadron, the regiment, etc. The Greeks had a warrior culture in the Bronze age, when only a few could afford good weapons, and when their states recovered and grew they developed a soldier culture. Japan only started adopting a soldier culture after pikes and muskets made mass-recruited troops effective, and they abandoned it when Tokugawa policies eliminated the pikes and guns. Even the Romans started with a warrior culture, developed a soldier culture at the height of their economic and political development, and then reverted to a warrior culture during their collapse (when their armies were almost all foederati).

So, long story short I think that the warrior-vs-soldier theory is just historical revisionism promoted as a way to affirm our superiority over warrior cultures like, say, the Taliban, when the truth is that the difference is economic, not cultural.

I guess I'm saying that for all its faults, they at least test the weapons and, with currently existing organizations, run teams through tests. That's probably the only part of the show where you can consider yourself to have learned something, though.

I'm not trying to knock the show, I think it's entertaining, I just don't take it very seriously. The Mythbusters guys take their science very seriously, and on the Deadliest Warrior end it's more so they have numbers to put into the simulator. I have been surprised by how effective a lot of the weapons are though- I used to think of decapitation as being a pretty hard thing to do, but no longer o_o

Dismemberment and decapitation is pretty easy for a sharp sword. Bones aren't as hard as you think, and joints even less so

More likely to hurt yourself than a zombie if you don't know anything about how to use them. Is the sword even combat-capable? A lot of swords sold are just replicas built with low-quality materials and rat-tail tangs that would likely bend or break after the first two or three times you hit a solid object.

Beardhammer wrote:I just don't see the need to buy things like that if they won't serve a practical use. What're you gonna do with the kukri? Just turn it into a mantelpiece? At least the other things you mentioned buying can actually be useful in normal day to day life (except maybe the axe and boxing gloves .)

Ryom wrote:I have a stainless steel katana on a stand that is solely for decoration (stainless steel longblades are decorative only as they are too brittle for real use) and I'm glad I spent the money on it. The kukri is likely going to see some actual use when I go camping, so there you go if you need justification for it

You respond to a humorous post as if it were serious and you chastise and criticize people for decorating their homes. I recommend a cruise and a nice year long quest (away from the forums) to find a sense of humor and some joy in life

anterovipunen wrote:Also swords are very effective at thrusting, but if you swung a sword and hit someone's arm who was wearing chainmail... what would happen? would the sword bounce off or slice through?? I guess that depends on the length of the sword.

Generally, you'd probably want to stab rather than slash at chain mail. The rings protect well against blows, but they also provide weak points that would catch the point of a sword rather than letting it slide off. If it's a thin blade or rapier, it might even break the ring and go through entirely.

Edit: As for blows to extremities, the chain mail would dull it, but it would still feel like a shattering blow with a blunt weapon. The arm would almost definitely be broken if the blow was strong enough.

This thread made my eyes bleed slightly. Some points, a few of which have been touched on already, I'd like to iterate:

1. Swords were light. This includes two handed swords. Speed and precision were as important in European as in Japanese swordsmanship, or anywhere else really.

The longsword is probably what most people think of when they say two handed sword. These were slightly longer than katana's, had about the same weight on average (with a higher variance though), but this included the pommel, which acted as a counterweight bringing the centre of gravity closer to the crossguard. Katana's had a rather thick blade in comparison. Both have their advantages: Longswords tend to be more versatile (double edged, crossguard, pommel) whereas katana's are more focused on cutting power (sharper, curved, heavier blade). In the end their use shows way more similarities than differences though, which really should not come as a surprise: Both are in the end used by humans, who tend to be very similar physically, and generally want to use their tools/weapons as efficiently as possible.

How the Zweihänder, the "other*" two handed sword, was used is contested; very similar to longswords, or specifically against pike formations... Either way, they were not that much heavier, and were definitely not top heavy "steel cricket sticks".

*There were loads of different two handed sword like weapons across the world of course, but these two are what most people usually think of I assume.

2. Armor works. Neither (chain)mail nor plate is easily pierced (both were worn over cloth padding btw). In fact hacking at plate armor with a sword is more likely to damage the latter than the former. Either more specialized weapons against which it doesn't protect well (warhammers, pollaxes etc...) or specific techniques (halfswording, wrestling and finishing with dagger) to reach unprotected points like visor, groin or armpits were used to deal with it. Trying to reach these through "default" use of a sword is pretty much futile.

Plate was generally cheaper than mail, but required a higher technology level and more "industrialized" workshops to create. This led to armor becoming much more prevalent in Europe in the 14th and 15th century. A full suit was also not that heavy, weighing around 45 (at most 50) pounds, far less and better distributed than what modern day soldiers need to carry with them. You wouldn't win a race with it but can easily run/get up/whatever. Only various forms of tournament armor were incredibly heavy, as with those the user literally only had to sit in the saddle for a few minutes, and nothing more.

Also interesting: Shields slowly disappeared in favor of two handed weapons as plate armor became more prevalent, and as firearms developed more piercing power, plate got thicker, while protection of non vital areas like legs was removed to keep weight from increasing too much.

3. A final note about folding of steel aka pattern welding in Japanese swords. This was mostly done because of the low quality of the available steel, to nonetheless get the desired properties. The Celts also practiced this, and were renowned for their swords (they didn't go as far as the Japanese with number of layers though AFAIK). The practice was abolished in Europe as availability of better steel simply made it an unnecessary waste of effort.

Roland Lockheart wrote:I concur with the hammer argument, it's been my experience that if you are able to hit someone(even with a shield) hard enough with a hammer it will stun them just long enough for you to hit them again, and again, and again...

If you're still around, please elaborate how you got that experience. Games or Larp weapons don't count by the way

Edit: Oh and about the original question: As long as the difference in equipment is not blatantly unfair, like brass knuckles vs sword or unarmored vs armored, training with the weapons is probably going to matter a lot more. Except for crossbows, they're kinda nasty. That said, weapons with more reach would be at an initial advantage I think; spears in case of unarmored combat or some armor piercing polearm for armored combat.

IcedT wrote:I'm not trying to knock the show, I think it's entertaining, I just don't take it very seriously. The Mythbusters guys take their science very seriously, and on the Deadliest Warrior end it's more so they have numbers to put into the simulator. I have been surprised by how effective a lot of the weapons are though- I used to think of decapitation as being a pretty hard thing to do, but no longer o_o

One interesting thing about Deadliest Warrior is that the "tests" they do seem to be a very small aspect of the final results. The simulator they're using appears to be incredibly complex and I'd actually be pretty interested in how IT works. Often times they'll give an advantage to one weapon but when you look at the results you see that the opposite weapon was in fact FAR superior. Really all the "tests" they do are just for the entertainment value and seem to hold very little value in the end. Its not clear how inaccurate the final results actually are though since we don't really know whats going into the simulator. I seem to recall them mentioning things like training and experience on one episode, whereas thats almost never mentioned in the "tests".

Beardhammer wrote:I just don't see the need to buy things like that if they won't serve a practical use. What're you gonna do with the kukri? Just turn it into a mantelpiece? At least the other things you mentioned buying can actually be useful in normal day to day life (except maybe the axe and boxing gloves .)

Ryom wrote:I have a stainless steel katana on a stand that is solely for decoration (stainless steel longblades are decorative only as they are too brittle for real use) and I'm glad I spent the money on it. The kukri is likely going to see some actual use when I go camping, so there you go if you need justification for it

You respond to a humorous post as if it were serious and you chastise and criticize people for decorating their homes. I recommend a cruise and a nice year long quest (away from the forums) to find a sense of humor and some joy in life

SecondTalon wrote:1.4 Episode 4: Pirate vs. Knight - You aren't even trying anymore, are you? (This should have been Knight vs. Samuri, Knight vs Viking, or by fuck, they better have had a scene where the Knight charges the fucking ship on his horse. That's on a jetski.)

This is a particular pet peeve of mine - treating something like it's a specific "fighting unit" of a particular organization when it's really an incredibly broad term. Talking about how well a pirate will do in a fight is like talking about how well a burglar will do in a fight.

setzer777 wrote:This is a particular pet peeve of mine - treating something like it's a specific "fighting unit" of a particular organization when it's really an incredibly broad term. Talking about how well a pirate will do in a fight is like talking about how well a burglar will do in a fight.

But that's probably also true for all organisations but the most elite of special forces teams. Every martial organisation that ever existed will have had a large ability spread across its membership. I mean, I bet the 'best' soldier in the US Army is much, much better than the 'worst'.

setzer777 wrote:This is a particular pet peeve of mine - treating something like it's a specific "fighting unit" of a particular organization when it's really an incredibly broad term. Talking about how well a pirate will do in a fight is like talking about how well a burglar will do in a fight.

But that's probably also true for all organisations but the most elite of special forces teams. Every martial organisation that ever existed will have had a large ability spread across its membership. I mean, I bet the 'best' soldier in the US Army is much, much better than the 'worst'.

True, but at least you can talk about the standard equipment package you might expect a U.S. Marine to have on X type of mission. "Pirates" is not an organization at all, anymore than "thieves" is.

The other day, I discovered that one of the unidentified pointy metal tools on my Swiss army knife would make a vicious hand to hand combat weapon. It locks at 90 degrees to the knife, allowing me to hold the main body of the knife in my hand, with the pointy end of the tool passing between two fingers and sticking straight out next to my knuckles.

Please note that despite the lovely avatar Sungura gave me, I am not a medical doctor.

Plasma Man wrote:The other day, I discovered that one of the unidentified pointy metal tools on my Swiss army knife would make a vicious hand to hand combat weapon. It locks at 90 degrees to the knife, allowing me to hold the main body of the knife in my hand, with the pointy end of the tool passing between two fingers and sticking straight out next to my knuckles.

A gutten tag was a weapon favored by mercenaries in the middle ages. It was a cross between a spear a mace and a club. It was clublike in shape but instead of rounded ends one was sharpened to make a spearhead and the wide side was given long spikes similar to a mace. In all it was an unpleasant way to go. It earned its name through shear irony although I am sure someone shouted that to a victim along the way. As for me I prefer the short sword. Long bows are nice but only for long distance up close they become quite useless. Short swords were used by most on the great civilizations somewhere along the way and remained popular all the way up to the retirement of swords with the age of gunpowder.

If you really want to know what to do in battle, always go with Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Its strategic advice stands the test of time and involves (at one point) flaming arrows. You don't mess with Sun Tzu.

Does anybody have any idea of what the hell energy is? It's the thing that, when applied to something, gives itself to the thing so that the thing can expend it, applying it to other things in multiple forms of it. What the hell is it?